WorldStar Award by World Packaging Organization

Press Communication

London, U.K. 05.12.2016

Thank you again for your participation in the WorldStar Award competition and your submission "Freshdy™ - Fresher for Longer", which has been assessed by the jury and has won the WorldStar Award 2017. Congratulations on this great honour!

Packaging organizations, members of WPO (World Packaging Organization), were together in Vienna (Austria) from November 14-18 to be part of the second WPO meeting of 2016. The organizations represented 24 countries from all over the world, including Brazil, USA, Austria, Australia, South Africa, Lebanon, China, Nigeria, Kenya, Croatia, UK, Germany, Finland, Spain, Czech Republic, to name a few. Besides the Board Meeting, members of WPO also had the opportunity of judging the WorldStar Awards that received a total of 291 entries from 35 countries.

WPO week in Vienna was organized by OFI, the Austrian packaging institute, a very active member. “As part of the activities, WPO members had the opportunity of participating in the Austrian Packaging Days conference and in the Smart Packaging Award Ceremony”, states Johannes Bergmair, OFI’s Executive Director and WPO Vice President for Sustainability & Food Safety.

One of the focal points for discussions during WPO week in Vienna was the Save Food initiative. “It’s such an important issue that WPO created a new category in WorldStar Awards as part of its agreement of supportingthe Save Food Initiative, from Messe Düsseldorf and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). “The idea is to encourage companies and students to develop new solutions on packaging that prevents food waste. The projects that will be presented during Interpack 2017, next May, in Düsseldorf, can be new. This means they do not need to have previously run for a national award”, explains Thomas Schneider, President of WPO.

Johannes Bergmair completes: “Save Food is a topic related to the whole supply chain. And there are many ways and technologies to work on, like logistics, “farm to table”, transcontinental routings, transit refrigeration, storage conditions, shelf life extension, product handling, and more. Packaging is just one of them and it is the key element that WPO will focus on”.

The candidates for the other special categories of WorldStar - President’s Award, Sustainability Award, Marketing Award and Food that Saves Packaging- will be announced in January. All winners will be recognised in an awards ceremony and gala evening on May 4, in Düsseldorf, Germany, to coincide with Interpack. To be eligible to enter WPO WorldStar Awards the packaging must be a winner in a national or multi-national competition that is recognized by WPO.

About WPO

WPO – World Packaging Organisation is a non-profit, non-governmental, international federation of packaging institutes, associations, federations and other interested parties including corporations and trade associations. With headquarters in Chicago (USA) the entity promotes projects and actions aligned to its main slogan “Better Quality of Life Through Better Packaging for More People.” With that mission in mind, WPO encourages the development of packaging technology, science and engineering; stimulation of international trade; and the advancement of packaging education and training. The President, Thomas Schneider, is based in US.